January 5, 2008

My first quilt

The finished quilt exceeded my expectations and Mom loved it. So worth staying up past midnight the night before my flight to work on it. I used the three pillow fabrics plus an additional red/yellow and a coordinating striped cotton for the back and binding. I wanted it a little bigger than the measurements in Bend the Rules, it ended up being about 52 inches square. It was tied using six strands of embroidery floss approximately 7 inches apart. The fabrics were so thick that I think machine quilting would have made it too stiff. It turned out super soft and just the right weight and heft for a cozy nap on the couch.

I actually serged all the pieces together which was really fast and solved the problem of the fabrics fraying and leaving threads everywhere. After I pieced it together and tied it, I sewed on the binding and then serged around the whole quilt for good measure (have I mentioned how much I love my serger?) Despite my late night I ran out of time so I took it with me and finished the binding by hand at my Mom's. Holy cow did that take a lot of time - three hours of hand sewing and my index finger was pretty sore by the time I was done (note to self, this is what thimbles are for so buy one already).

It got a little hairy when I was putting the layers together, but I took someone's suggestion that I use safety pins to hold them together and it was a big help, as was stretching and pinning the backing fabric down (to a full sized futon mattress) to keep it flat. The whole process was very pleasing, I loved seeing the pattern emerge and watching the quilt top grow as I sewed the strips together. Yes, quilt #1 was a success and I'm already planning the next one.